Star blazed a trail in countrymusic
DALLAS — Charley Pride, the legendary singer known for his velvet baritone and for breaking the color line in country music, died Saturday of complications related to COVID-19. He was 86.
From 1966 until 1987, Dallas-based Pride was one of the biggest stars in country music, scoring 52 Top 10 country hits, including 29 charttoppers. More than a dozen of his songs crossed over to the pop charts, including “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” and “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone.” He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry and the CountryM usic Hall of Fame, won four Grammys, and sold an estimated 70 million records — more than anyone at RCA not named Elvis.
Pride fused traditional country music with pop leanings and sophisticated production styles, making his records irresistible to radio programmers. Despite his long string of hits and his rich, smooth baritone voice, he is perhaps best known for being the first major Black artist in the largely alabaster world of country music.
Once called “the Jackie
Robinson of country,” Pride grew tired of the never-ending questions about his skin color and preferred to talk about his music.
“They used to ask me how it feels to be the ‘first colored country singer.’ Then it was ‘first Negro country singer,’ then ‘first Black country singer.’ Now I’m the ‘first African-American country singer.’ That’s about the only thing that’s changed. This country is so raceconscious, so ate-up with colors and pigments. I call it ‘skin hangups’ — it’s a disease,” he told the Dallas Morning News in 1992.
Last month, Pride collected the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award at the Country Music Association Awards in Nashville, becoming the first Black artist to receive the honor since it was created in 2012.
The scaled-down version of the awards took place indoors at the Music City Center convention hall under jittery circumstances, as several artists dropped out days ahead after testing positive for COVID-19. The Country Music Association said all stars had been tested multiple times for COVID-19 before performing. Arequest for“Nodrama, just music,” from the Country Music Association also drew criticismfromfans inayearmarkedby historic protests over racial inequality.
The Nov. 11 national telecast marked Pride’s last performance. Rising Black country star Jimmie Allen introduced him, saying, “Here’s the truth, I might never have hada career in countrymusic if itwasn’t for a truly groundbreaking artist who took his best shot andmade the best kinda history in our genre.” Then the two sang a duet of “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.”
“Well, you might not believe but I’m nervous as can be,” said Pride in his acceptance speech.
Pitched inNegro Leagues
Charley FrankPridewas born in Sledge, Miss., on March 18, 1934. One of 11 children raised by sharecropper parents, Pride sang from anearly age, but his first true talent
was pitching, fielding and hitting.
As a teenager working on the farm, he dreamed of following Jackie Robinson into the major leagues: “I said, ‘Here’s my way outof thecottonfields,” he toldNational Public Radio in 2017.
Pride left Mississippi in the 1950s to pitch in the Negro Leagues, eventually playing for teams inMemphis, Idaho, Wisconsin and Birmingham, Ala., where he and another playerwere traded in exchange for a team bus, according to Pride’s1994 autobiography, “Pride: TheCharleyPride Story,” co-written with Jim Henderson.
He aimed for the majors, and even tried out with the California Angels and New YorkMets, but injuries kept him out the big leagues. With encouragement from his coachesandfromcountry starRed Foley, Pridelaunchedhismusic careerwhile still playing baseball. He started out modestly, performing in nightclubs around Montana,
where he’d moved to play for the Missoula Timberjacks and where he later worked in construction and at a lead smelting plant.
His big break came in 1965, when he traveled to Nashville and persuaded Chet Atkins to sign him to RCA Records. His first single, “The Snakes Crawl At Night,” flopped. Butin1966, helandedaTop10 hit and a Grammy nomination with his thirdsingle, “JustBetween You AndMe.” Fromthat point, his career skyrocketed.
For the next 20 years, Pride rackeduphit after hit with songs as diverse as “Mississippi Cotton Picking Delta Town,” the reggaestyle “You’re My Jamaica” and his chart-topping version ofHankWilliams’ “Honky Tonk Blues.” He won a gospel performance Grammy for his 1971 song “Let Me Live.”
Critics dubbed his high-sheen country-pop sound “countrypolitan.” But Pride never tried to hide the twang and drawl in his singing voice, and he took great pride in
his Southern roots.
“I’m reallythe epitomeofAmericanmusic, fromgospel to blues to country, but country was the music I emulated the most,” he said.
Moving to Dallas
In 1967, he became only the second Black musician to appear on the Grand Ole Opry — after harmonica player DeFord Bailey. Two years later, with his career exploding, Pride decided he needed to move from Montana to an area with a larger airport: Whilehe considered heading back to the Deep South, he and his wife Rozene picked Dallas because it seemed more progressive. The couple lived for many years in a sprawling home in North Dallas.
“I grew up in a segregated society, and I didn’twant to subjectmy three kids to that,” he told the Morning News in 2017. “We picked out what we thought was the best place for the kids, and also for traveling around the world, and you couldn’t find a better place for that than Dallas.”
WhenPride startedinNashville, some people struggled with the concept of a Black singer performingwhat is essentially themusic of white Southerners. In a 2017 interview with NPR, Pride recalled a Nashville publicist telling him “You look like them, but you sound like us.”
Yet in most interviews, Pride downplayed the role skin color played in his career and said he was never jeered or booed by white audiences.
“Whenever I tell writers that, they look atme like they think I’m lying. But why would I lie? I’m a success. It would make a real sensational story if I talked about how this person called me this and that person called me that, but it never happened. Not once,” he said.
Pride scored his biggest hit in 1971 with the million-selling “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin,’ ” which crossed over to No. 21 on the pop charts and introduced him to a whole new audience. That same year, he won CMA awards for Entertainer of the Year and TopMale Vocalist.
After more than two decades of dominating the charts, Pride parted ways with RCA in the ’80s, and scored his last hit with 1989’s “Moody Woman.” Like a lot aging country legends, he spoke out about an industry obsessed with young stars.
“Country music is becoming more like pop music all the time. They play the same 20 records over and over. Here I am, singing better than ever, and I can’t even get a record deal,” he told The News in 1992.
When Pride wasn’t working, he could often be spotted watching the Texas Rangers — he owned a minority interest intheteam— and for years, he practiced with the team during spring training. But he never stopped performing. He continued to put out new albums and tour into his 80s.
“When you go onstage and you got awhole audience singing backup to every word of your song, it’s one of those things that gets in your blood,” he told The News in 2017. “You just love it, and it’s hard to stop.”